Christmas Slay Ride: Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders Read Online Free Page B

drown her.”
    When he was satisfied that she was dead, Murphy dragged her corpse out of the water and tried to lift her up the steep embankment. She was too heavy, so he resorted to dragging her by the hair, a move that widened her already-gaping throat wound. When his strength gave out he dropped her, sending the body sliding back into the water. Swearing, Murphy gave up and returned to the Bardsey Inn, where he ordered a drink.
    The barmaid stared and asked why his face was all scratched up. Gazing in a mirror, Murphy saw dark red scratch marks everywhere. Blood also covered his topcoat. Pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his face, he told her that he had been in a fight with two men. He drank his pint of beer and hurried back to his lodgings at 40 Baker Street, where he sold his remaining food provisions to an old man for a half groat (2d) and supposedly talked someone into offering a three penny bit (3d) for his bloody topcoat. Before going back outside, Murphy said to a fellow lodger, John Murray, “Speak of me as you find me.”
    “I can’t do anything else,” Murray replied, puzzled.
    “I have done wrong tonight,” the ex-soldier exclaimed. Then he left.
    ******

Lizzie Jones, Gwen’s friend, had gone back into the Bardsey Inn to resume drinking, probably believing that the other woman would come back soon. When Gwen failed to show, she went back to her rented room, where her friend’s seven-year-old boy was waiting.
    To her shock, William Murphy was sitting on a bed on the building’s ground floor, face and hands smeared with blood. When she asked where Gwen was, he grumbled, “You have seen Gwen-Ellen for the last time. You will see her no more.”
    The little boy, who had appeared, began to cry. Murphy gave him a penny and asked a friend, Johnny Jones, to give him a piece of bread. When Jones complied, Murphy asked if anyone in the house was willing to do a job for him.
    “Go and fetch a policeman for me,” he directed.
    “You haven’t had enough drink for me to fetch you a policeman,” Jones joked.
    Murphy replied that he was guilty of worse than being drunk, and invited the other man to come and see. He led Jones to the trench where Gwen’s body lay.
    It was a horrible sight. Her eyes were bulging, bloody froth flecked her lips, and the fur muff around her neck was saturated with blood. The throat wound extended from ear to ear, so deep that her windpipe, muscles, and arteries had been severed down to the spine.
    Johnny Jones froze in shock. Then he turned and ran, so quickly that the nails in the soles of his shows struck the paving stones and sent sparks flying. (For years afterward, his whole family was nicknamed “the Flame family.”) When he found a policeman and blurted his story, the officer took him to the police station.
    To their surprise, Murphy was already waiting outside the building. He said he had come to give himself up, and searched his pockets to produce the murder weapon, but it was gone. It was subsequently found at the crime site.
    When he was brought before the Holyhead justices, they committed him for trial in Beaumaris Court on January 26th, 1910. He bowed and said, “Very good, sir. Another fortnight of peace.”
    When his trial began at the Anglesey Assizes, the area was wild with excitement. The death sentence had not been passed at the Assizes since 1862, and those who had been following the case were positive that the dry spell was about to be broken. Public feeling against the self-confessed murderer was so strong that when he arrived at the courthouse in a closed carriage, people yelled threats and threw things.
    The courtroom was packed within minutes of being opened to the public. Spectators occupied every available seat and window sill, and soon it was standing room only. Those unable to gain entry hovered at the windows, listening eagerly. One man actually managed to stick his head inside, prompting the judge to comment, “If that gentlemen with his head